Performance reviews

Towards the end of 1965 there was a lot of good music on th airwaves. But for us kids, High School was a real drag and life in our little suburban town (ONLY thirty miles west of Greenwich Village) wasn't too exciting. Except for one thing: a local band called the Myddle Class! To us, they were as good as the Rolling Stones ANY day and their concerts were the most exciting ones we'd ever seen. They were managed by a man who lived in our town -- Al Aronowitz. My friend Judy was the Aronowitz's babysitter and she would tell us the most amazing stories about the people who would call for Al or come home from New York with him to hide out in the suburbs: people like Brian Jones, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Carole King, who wrote songs for everyone including the Myddle Class. We would hide outside Al's house for hours at a time just to catch a glimpse of those stars. Al usually hired other local bands to open for the Myddle Class but for the December 11th concert at Summit High, he hired (for $80) a NY band called the Velvet Underground. Judy told us that the band was feeling low because they had just been fired from the Cafe Wha for being undanceable, so we were not expecting too much from them.

Nothing could have prepared the kids and parents assembled in the auditorium for what they were about to experience that night. Our only clue was the small crowd of strange-looking people hanging around in front of the stage. When the curtain went up, nobody could believe their eyes! There stood the Velvet Underground -- all tall and dressed mostly in black; two of them were wearing sunglasses. One of the guys with the shades had VERY long hair and was wearing silver jewelry. He was holding a large violin. The drummer had a Beatle haircut and was standing at a small oddly arranger drumkit. was it a boy or a girl? Before we could take it all in, everyone was hit by a screeching surge of sound, with a pounding beat louder than anything we had ever heard. About a minute into the second song, which the singer introduced as "Heroin", the music began to get even more intense. It swelled and accelerated like a giant tidal wave which was threatening to engulf us all. At this point, most of the audience retreated in horror for the safety of their homes, thoroughly convinced of the dangers of rock & roll music. My friends and I moved a little closer to the stage, knowing that something special was happening.

Backstage after their set, the viola player was seen apologizing profusely to an outraged Myddle Class entourage for scaring away half the audience. Al Aronowitz was philosophical about it, though, "at least you've given them a night to remember" and invited everyone to a party at his house after the show.

The New York Society for Clinical Psychiatry survived an invasion last night by Andy warhol, Edie Sedgwick and a new rock 'n' roll group called "The Velvet Underground".

"The Chic Mystique of Andy Warhol," described by an associate of the painter as "a kind of community action - underground - look at yourself - film project," was billed as the evening's entertainment for the psychiatry society's 43d annual dinner at Delmonico's Hotel. And until the very last minute, neither group quite believed the other would show up.

But sure enough, as the black-tied psychiatrists and their formally gowned wives began to trickle into Delmonico's lobby at 6:30, there was Andy, and in the evening get-up, too -- sunglasses, black tie, dinner jacket and corduroy work pants. And right there with him were some of his "factory" hands -- Gerard Malanga, poet; Danny Williams, cameraman, and the "factory" foreman, Billy Lunich.

The "factory," as any Warhol buff knows, is the big , silver-lined loft where he and his coterie make their underground films and help mass-produce Andy's art.

What "The Chic Mystique" was nobody really explained. The Warhol part of the program included a showing of his underground films as background for cocktail conversation and, at dinner, a concert by the rock 'n' roll group. And Warhol and his cameramen moved among the gathering with hand-held cameras, using the psychiatrists as the cast of a forthcoming Warhol movie.

The psychiatrists who turned out in droves for the dinner, were there to be entertained -- but also, in a way, to study Andy. "Creativity and the artist have always held a fascination for the serious student of human behavior," said Dr. Robert Campbell, the program chairman. "And we're fascinated by the mass communications activities of Warhol and his group."

Delmonico's elegant white-and-gold Colonnade and Grand Ballroom had probably never seen such a swinging scene. Edie sedgwick, the "superstar" of Warhol's movies, was on full blast -- chewing gum and sipping a martini.

There was John Cale, leader of "The Velvet Underground," in a black suit with rhinestones on the collar. There was Nico, identified by Warhol as "a famous fashion model and now a singer," in a white slack suite with long blond hair. And there were all those psychiatrists, away from their couches but not really mingling, not letting their hair down at all.

"I suppose you could call this gathering a spontaneous eruption of the id," said Dr Alfred Lilienthal. "Warhol's message is one of super-reality." said another, "a repetition of the concrete quite akin to the L.S.D. experience." "Why are they exposing us to these nuts?" a third asked. "But don't quote me."

Dr. Arthur Zitrin, director of psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital, was slightly worried. "We've had everyone appear at these annual dinners, from Paul Tillich to Warhol," he said. "I'm program chairman for next year. How the hell are we going to follow this act?"

The act really came into its own midway though the dinner roast beef with stringbeans and small potatoes, when "The Velvet Underground" swung into action. the high-decibel sound, aptly described by Dr Campbell as "a short-lived torture of cacophony," was a combination of rock 'n' roll and Egyptian belly-dance music.

The evening ended with a short talk by Jonas Mekas, film director and critic. But long before that, guests had begun to stream out. The reaction of the early departees was fairly unanimous. "Put it down as decadent Dada," said one. "It was ridiculous, outrageous, painful." said Dr. Harry Weinstock. "Everything that's new doesn't necessarily have meaning. It seemed like a whole prison ward had escaped."

"You want to do something for mental health?" asked another psychiatrist. "Kill the story."

Give Andy Warhol enough rope and some long enough spools of raw film and he'll succeed in putting "underground" movies right down a hole in the ground. That is the not unpleasant prospect vitalized by Mr. Warhol's latest jape - at least, the latest to be exhibited. It is something called "More Milk Yvette," which was put on last night at the Film-Maker's Cinematheque, the basement theater at 125 West 41st Street. It will be shown each night through Sunday at 8 and 10.

In this little bit of veiled allusion, Mr. Warhol is letting his camera go on a couple of close-up studies that are composed on a split or double screen. In the first study, a bewigged and roughed transvestite does a weary and witless travesty on a movie star (maybe Lana Turner) drinking milk and eating a hamburger and a pear with a bored and listless fellow, while on the other half of the screen there is a tedious pantomime of a phony torture in which a grinning guy is bound and lashed with ropes.

This section of the picture may be vaguely and drearily observed (if you want to observe it as something) as a mockery of masculinity.

The second part is a split screen composition of a feminine portraiture. On one side of the screen, a baby-doll blonde type is primped and powdered by a make-up man, while on the other side the same girl eats a long meal in an elegant dining-room. A the end, both panels are used to show the girl with her head in the toilet. It's an appropriate way to finish this film.

Also on the bill is a performance by a group of rock 'n' roll singers called the Velvet Underground. They bang away at their electronic equipment, while random movies are thrown on the screen in back of them.

When will somebody en-noble Mr. Warhol with an above ground movie called "For Crying Out Loud"?

Andy Warhol and his four-member pop group, The Velvet Underground, came to the Village last week, settling into the tatty, old Polish National Hall (above the Dom, on St. mark's Place) for a three week stay. A slender, white hand-painted banner streching from the balcony of the third-floor hall almost to the street was lit by winking lights diverting the the young couples who had almost decided to enter the ground-floor Domand listen to Tony Scott.

Upstairs, Warhol (silver hair, shades, leather jacket) watched impassively from the balcony as about one-third of the tables in the vast hall filled up as soon as the ticket office opened. "It's a place for people who have nothing to do," he said. "They took my paintings as collateral. My pictures are collateral for everything." An ironic thought from an artist who admits that he himself doesn't even paint most of his pictures - merely signs them.

(Recently the Dannon yoghurt people invited him to paint their truck, actually paint it. Of course, everybody tells Andy that he should collect a fat fee, hire a couple of truck painters and merely sign their work. Conversely , there's the man uptown who's opening a new discotheque and invited Warhol to design it for him. Andy refused but the man is broadcasting it around that he's hired Warhol and nobody will know the difference anyway unless Andy sues.)

For the first part of the opening night on St. Mark's Place there was some worry about whether the bar could open or not but by half past ten it did (beer 75 cents, cokes 50 cents) and customers were carrying paper plates of 50-cent sandwiches (salami, bologna, swiss cheese) back to their red and white checkered tablecloths, anxious not to miss any of the gradually expanding action.

Onstage the rear wall was still being painted while the movie "Couch" was being projected on it, giving an interesting three-dimensional effect to the film, and even if there hadn't been a stepladder in front of the "screen" it still wouldn't have been easy to follow the plot because infrequent bursts of rock and roll would burst trough the amplifiers completely drowing out the already garbled soundtrack. Occasionally a couple would get up and dance bust most people preferred to sit and watch.

A pair of other projectors up in the balcony went into action beaming two different movies onto the narrow strips of wall beside the stage. A colored spotlight onstage focused onto the mirrored ball that revolved in the ceiling sending pinpoints of light on predictable circuits around the room. A plastic globe glowed in cycles of changing pastels colors.

Somebody was watching the late news on a tiny, portable television set. "Wow!" said Andy. "Wouldn't it be great if we could have one of those on every table?"

The action was hotting up. Colored floodlights stabbed out from the corners, caressing the dancers with beams of green, orange, purple. At one point three loudspeakers were pouring out a cacophony of different sounds; three records played simultaneously. Oddly it all seems to fit. "Vinyl" was playing on the screen ("We borrowed that story from Anthony Burgess," Andy says. "Hope he doesn't mind. We wanted to buy his book but we couldn't afford it.") but it was being obscure by brightly colored slides and patterns from two slide machines operated by Jacki Casson. Slashes of red and blue, squares of black and white, rows of dancing dots covered the walls, the ceiling, the dancers.

Twice during the evening were sets by the Velvet Underground, a group whose howling, throbbing beat is amplified and extented by electronic dial-twiddling. It is a sound hard to describe, even harder to duplicate, but haunting in his uniqueness. And with the Velvets come the blonde, bland, beautiful Nico, another cooler Dietrich for another coller generation.

From upfront, by the stage, the hall was a frantic fandango of action: the lights flashing on and off, the fragmented pieces of movies, the colored patterns and slides sweeping the mirrored walls, the steady white beams of balcony projectors, the Sylviane strip lighting writhing on the floor, flashing on and off like a demented snake who's swallowed phosphorus, the foot-long flashlights of Gerard Malanga randomly stabbing the darkened hall as he danced frenetically in front of the group.

When they counted the takings they discovered that more than 400 people had paid the $2.50 to attend. Already Andy Warhol, somtime painter, has been fingerprinted for a cabaret card (which, typically, bears the picture of his assistant, Paul Morissey). Now there is a talk of unions and agents and long-term contracts. Art has come to the discotheque and it will never be the same again.

(...) the song I remember most particularly was one they did at a strange San Diego concert in 1968. They were on with Quicksilver Messenger Service, and much of the audience was apathetic or put off; they wanted those California acid-vibes instead of what they took for cold New York negativism. Lou Reed, himself, came out from the dressing room and walked around the audience with his hands in his pockets, a slight, calm figure with a noncommital expression on his face. Seemingly, nobody noticed him, because nobody said anything to him - although almost everybody in that place was so busy being cool they could barely get up the gumption to dance, so it probably doesn't matter. My girl an I wanted to go up and say something to Lou, shake his hand and tell him how much we dug his music, but I was afraid. I thought he would be some maniac with rustly eyeballs or something, the image made me nervous so we didn't approach him, even though she said: "It seems tome like that was all they really wanted, for someone to just come up and tell them they appreciate what they're doing." And as usual she was right, as Lou confirmed when I talked him.

That was a quite night, though. In a way it was the ultimate Velvet Underground concert. The audience was terrible; those that weren't downright hostile kept interrupting the announcements between songs to yell out what they wanted to hear, like "How about 'Heroin'!" and even "Play 'Searchin' For My Mainline'!" But right in the middle of all these bad vibes, the Velvets launched into a new song that was one of the most incredible musical experiences of my concert carreer. Lou announced it as "Sister Ray, Part Two", but it sounded nothing like the previous song. It was built on the most dolorous riff imaginable, just a few scales rising and falling mournfully, somewhat like "Venus In Furs" but less creaky, more deliberate and eloquent. The lyrics, many of which Lou made up as he went along, seemed like fantasy from an urban inferno: "Sweet Sister Ray went to a movie / The floor was painted red and the walls were greeb / 'Ooohh,' she cried / 'This is the strangest movie I've ever seen...'". But it was the chorus that was the most moving: "Ohhhh, sweet rock and roll - it'll cleanse your soul..."

That's classic, and no other group in America could have (or would have) written and sung those words. (...)

(...) Those writhing bodies suddenly started moving as one-cool, carefully choregraphed, slow and impassionate. It was no doubt the drugs. The drugs and the Velvet Underground. Here at the Vulcan Gas Company in Austin Texas with the carpet of invading crickets crunching underfoot as you enter, and the streaming, sunbathed and sexually wholesome masses undulating and panting inside, urban evil was inflicting itself. Gimme heroin they screamed. And they got Sister Ray in the ear for 45 minutes, hard and cold and turning the provincial darkness of the dully damned into the oh God gimme it now decadence of New York City. You're gonna wait for that man baby. And you're gonna wait for some more and when he comes don't expect no satisfaction. Uh-uh. You're gonna get hurt bad. Baby he's so mean, he's so cool - he would fuck you and your mother at the same time without losing eye contact with either one. (...)

The Velvet Underground was playing experimental rock in 1965 when the Beatles just wanted hold your hand and San Francisco was still the place where Toby Bennet left his heart.

The Group came to prominence in 1965 and 1968 through an association with Andy Warhol and Nico, the singer and actress. The musicians played a long standing engagement at the Balloon Farm, now the Electric Circus, on St. Mark's Place, where they were a part of Warhol's mixed-media show, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. They are appearing through tomorrow at Max's Kansas City, their first New York appearance in three years.

The music, which after all this time rates very high, is more rhythmic and forceful than ever before. The Velvet Underground plays a hard rock that is powerful and tight as a raised fist; so unified and together that it just rolls itself into a knot and throbs.

The group defies categorization as well as any other group currently making the rounds, better to say that their music is loud, driving, with remarkable interchange of dynamics between guitars and bass, and that awesome sense of unity. The vocals tend to be second rate and subservient to the instrumental, which is a common condition.

The musicians should be seen more often than once every three years; they make 80 percent of today's popular rock groups seem pointless and amateurish.

The Velvet Underground consists of Lou Reed, vocals and guitar; Sterling Morrison, guitar; Doug Yule, bass and vocals; and Bill Yule, sitting in on drums.

Live! - Deja Vu
Allan Jones, photo Matt Bright
Melody Maker, June 12, 1993, p. 12
Edinburgh Playhouse, June 1993.

Live
Paul Alessandrini
Rock & Folk, 312, August 1993
Olympia, 17/6/93 and Hippodrome de Vincennes, 26/6/93.

Les concerts de l'été
François Ducray
Best, no. 301, p. 54, August 1993
Hippodrome de Vincennes 26/6/93 (supporting U2).

(...) A son tour, U2 offrait un morceau de sa scène au Velvet Underground, quatuor mythique des sixties new-yorkaises, en une sorte d'hommage interactif. (...)

(...) Rigolo aussi s'avéra le sévère Velvet d'un temps de poussières peut-être pas si révolu que ça, rigolo comme on dit de la reprise en forme ple légère d'une pièce jadis grave : par euphémisme, pour se détendre. Car Louis, John, Maureen et Sterling n'étaient là que pour prendre et donner du plaisir, évidemment ! Et même si tel n'était pas tout à fait le cas, rien de glauque ne filtra : Louis chanta positivement, John énergiquement, Moe faux, Sterl au hasard-balthazar, tous jouèrent proprement et tout le monde s'avoua content.Pendant "I'm Beginning To See The Light", on put même croire discerner un accès de bonne humeur, voire un élan de réciprocité entre ces paladins rescussités et la foule pied-sur-terre qui les enregistrait : effet magnétoscopique boeuf, neuf et saisissant ! (...)

Autographe
Emanuelle Debaussard
Best, no. 301, p. 88, August 1993
Prague, 13/6/93.

Lou Reed était venu interviewer Vaclav Havel lors de l'accession de l'écrivain au rôle de président. Depuis la Tchécoslovaquie a splitté, le Velvet s'est reformé et Vaclav à son tour est venu voir Lou. Le président au balcon écoute sa jeunesse défiler. Les jeunes eux restent perplexes devant le mythe. Le groupe amputé de son âme, le président amputé de ses pouvoirs, plus personne ne croit vraiment au futur de l'un ou de l'autre mais Vaclav seul n'a pas l'air de faire semblanr. Un concert au pays d'origine des ancêtres de Warhol, dans la Palais de la Culture, temple des cérémonies du régime passé... "Je suis fier de jouer ici. Je sais ce que cet endroit représente pour vous" lance Lou Reed.

Réciproquement le public sait ce que le Velvet représente pour lui. Pour les quelques rares de sa génération ou la majorité qui n'en a connu que les plaisirs posthumes. Symboles en pagaille. La magie naît de la nostalgie, du passé, du contexte, des souvenirs mais certainement pas de l'instant présent.

Le public crie "Looouuuuuu". Lou regarde John. John regarde Lou. Face à face ému sur la gauche de la scène. Sterling regarde ses pieds ou louche sur son micro. Moe regarde tout le monde, entre maîtresse d'école inquiète et gamine devant un arbre de noël. Les deux derniers font figure de laissés pou compte appliqués, contents d'être là, mais comme vaguement pressés d'en finir. Lou et John s'amusent sans retenues. Les choeurs se décalent, les quatre jouent en parralèle sans jamais se retrouver. Du bricolage avec des moyens de pros. On aurait préférer les voir jouer sur trois cordes, avec des instruments éculés et des amplis prêts à rendre l'âme, retrouver un groupe bordélique de façon délibérée et non visiblement contre sa volonté. Les fantasmes affadissent la réalité. Retour au présent avec un nouveau morceau au rappel, "Coyot". Le meilleur de l'avis d'Ari, le fils de Nico, autre fantôme à hanter la salle. Sans oublier celui de Chvéïk, figure de la littérature locale. Car en fait de retouvailles émouvantes, les nouvelles aventures du brave soldat Reed et de sa bande avaient bien le goût amer et absurde d'un roman de Hasek.

Compiled by Olivier Landemaine